Miami Spice 2016: The Five Best Weekend Brunches

The weekend is here, and you and your friends are busy making brunch plans. You peruse the Miami Spice website in hopes of taking advantage of a deal and find the impossible: According to Spice, brunch does not exist!

Hold on, young grasshopper. Miami Spice brunch does exist — it's just referred to as lunch. If you use your imagination, plenty of the city's best restaurants offer a three-course weekend lunch menu during the two-month promotion.

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Brunch, lunch. Who cares what it's called? An afternoon meal with your besties or boo on a Saturday or Sunday is what you want.

These five restaurants offer generous three-course meal deals for your weekend dining pleasure for $23 (tax and tip additional). Just a note while Spice brunching: That $23 deal can quickly turn expensive when you add afternoon dranks, so temper yourself with rounds of water if you're on a budget.

5. Pisco y Nazca So many choices abound at this new Doral tribute to Peru. The restaurant features modern takes on traditional Peruvian cuisine and craft cocktails. The Miami Spice menu offers four appetizers and five entrées to choose from, so it's best to bring a group so you can try everything. For starters, don't miss the ceviche cremoso of mahi, shrimp, and creamy leche de tigre. By all means, order the quinoa chaufa with salmon, tri-color quinoa, bell peppers, and pickled salsa criolla as your entrée. For dessert, there's arroz con leche cheesecake.

Courtesy Via Verdi

4. Via Verdi If you've always wanted to take a trip to Italy but never got around to booking your Alitalia flight, don't fret. Simply reserve a table at Via Verdi and allow twin chefs Fabrizio and Nicola Carro to show you la dolce vita. The restaurant is offering rotating fare from different regions of Italy. First stop: the island of Sicily. Start with caponata or arancini with beef ragu, peas, and mozzarella before your choice of caserecce al pesto trapanese (twist pasta with vegetarian Sicilian pesto) or veal bocconcini with Parmesan-and-bread-crumb-sauteed broccolini. A cannoli with chocolate ricotta ends your culinary journey.

3. PB Station If your brunch group is filled with hard-to-please people, make reservations at PB Station. The Pubbelly Boys' latest endeavor, located inside the Langford Hotel, offers a weekend meal that has something to make everyone happy. Start with a bonus soup of the day. Then choose from a market salad, avocado toast, tartare slider, or barbecued dates for an appetizer. Entrées include grilled chicken, steak-frites, roasted salmon, tigatoni and burrata, a Gruyère burger, and ancient grain salad. For dessert, there's a Granny Smith apple bread pudding, mango-and-pistachio kulfi, and the intriguingly named "fudge my life."

2. Redlander Restaurant If city life has got you down, hop into the car, take a drive to the Redland, and turn your brunch into a day trip. At the Redlander Restaurant, tucked inside Schnebly Redland's Winery, chef Dewey LoSasso has created a wonderful Spice menu filled with locally sourced fruits, vegetables, and seafood. Start with either guava-glazed chicken wings or chilled ceviche; then move on to "steak and eggs" — a charred hanger steak paired with a smoked onion goat cheese frittata and roasted tomatoes. Or choose a snapper-and-yuca sandwich or Moroccan vegetable chili with crisp tofu. Finish with lychee panna cotta or a chocolate-and-spent-grain sandwich with dulce de leche ice cream. Pair your meal with fresh beer from Miami Brewing Company or a fruit wine from Schnebly Redland's Winery — which just happen to be on the premises.

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Hakkasan's dim sum

Photo by Laine Doss

1. Hakkasan Each year, Hakkasan at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach offers the most generous din sum brunch for Miami Spice. There's no need to choose what you want from the menu, because you get everything listed. Start with a dim sum basket filled with goodies like lotus root with mushroom chicken shui mai, spinach scallops dumplings, and black-rice vegetable dumplings. Then you'll be treated to jasmine tea smoked chicken with soy sauce, stir-fried baby pak choi with garlic, and beef fried rice with ginger. The only choice you'll need to make is dessert: Will it be the mango custard or the selection of homemade macarons?

Update: The Continental, originally on this list, is not serving lunch on weekends. The Miami Spice website should also be updated to reflect this information shortly.

Laine Doss is the food and spirits editor for Miami New Times, has been featured on Cooking Channel's Eat Street and Food Network's Great Food Truck Race. She won an Alternative Weekly award for her feature about what it's like to wait tables.